​In Likutey Moharan 1: 74, Rebbe Nachman gives a whole discourse about Hoshana Rabba and Simchat Torah, most of which is extremely obscure and hard to understand. But these are the parts I picked out as speaking to me, at least, going into our next few days of chag:

“Hoshana Rabbah corresponds to unintelligent speech, for it corresponds to the willow branch leaf, which resembles the lips…So, Hoshana Rabbah which represents judgment, the aspect of the Fear of Isaac, is drawn from immature consciousness (mochin dekatnut, literally ‘small mindedness’, which is why its speech is still without intelligence (da’at).“However, Simchat Torah corresponds to intelligent speech, which is the life-force of the soul, as stated in the Zohar, “Fortunate are those who know the paths of the Torah and toil in it in an upright way. They plant Above a tree of life of all healing.

“This corresponds to Jacob, the aspect of wisdom, of mature consciousness, which is the healing of the soul, as in, “A charitable sun with healing in its wings.” For the sun corresponds to Jacob, who corresponds to wisdom, to intelligent speech, which is an aspect of the Torah, of Simchat Torah, which corresponds to the tree of healing.”

Feel free to come up with your own ideas of what Rabbenu is trying to put across here, as Rebbe Nachman himself firmly encouraged his followers to develop novel ideas and interpretations from his teachings, as long as they stayed firmly within the bounds of Torah law.

But here’s what I think Rabbenu is teaching us about this time of Hoshana Rabba / Simchat Torah:

WE NEED TO WORK ON IMPROVING OUR COMMUNICATION FROM OUR INNER DIMENSION

In a nutshell - that we need to work on our communication with the people we love, to ensure that we’re speaking openly and honestly and from a place that will ultimately result in a ‘healing of the soul’ - for everyone involved.

When the soul is happy, the emotions are balanced, and the body and physical health is also usually the best it can be.

And vice-versa.

So many of us today find it so hard to speak honestly and gently, especially to our spouses and children. Especially to the people we most love in the world. So many of us are scared to be ‘the real us’, or to feel our real feelings, and certainly to express them in an open way.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons we take the willow branches on Hoshana Rabba and smack them into the floor a few times, because we’re trying to dislodge all the superficial, plastic ‘small minded’ speech that keeps us so far away from really connecting to our loved ones.

Today is the day for breaking down the spiritual and mental barriers that are preventing us from speaking openly about the things that really matter, and from telling out spouses and kids (and others…) how much we really love and care for them.

And then tomorrow, once we’ve freed our soul and our facility of speech from the klipot that are encasing them, we can really celebrate the giving of the Torah with full-on, deeply-felt, sincere joy and simcha.

In this generation of i-Phones and emails, so many of us are hiding behind Facebook posts and Instagram because it’s easier to feel superficially ‘connected’ like that, than to really risk a genuine soul-connection.

But today’s the day that can all change!

So take your willow branches, and smash them into the floor.​And then go tell your significant others how much you really love them, and how much they really mean to you.

Just want to point out the other side of the story, that many people reject and otherwise attack those showing their "real" self. This can be done aggressively, but is more likely to be attacked by pretending you didn't say anything (i.e. you don't exist), chuckling at you, sniping, telling you why you are wrong to speak/believe as you do, and so on.

As far as I see it, people who aren't "real" are often just protecting themselves from very the real assaults likely to occur.

And to be fair, maybe the attackers are right sometimes (in spirit, not in any nasty actions). But maybe dealing with their own "warts" is enough and they don't have what it takes to deal with yours as you reveal your "real" self to them.

Thank you.

Reply

Rivka

10/15/2017 02:32:24 am

Myrtle, you make very fair points if we're only talking about friends / acquaintances etc. but I was really referring to talking to our loved ones - kids, spouses, siblings and (even!) parents - in a sincere, real way.

If a close family member would start chuckling / sniping / emotionally abusing someone for sincerely expressing their love, that's clearly very problematic on a number of levels, and should be acknowledged as being clearly abusive behavior that somehow needs to be properly addressed, even though that's clearly very difficult to do for many different reasons.